WildStar in a New Light

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The visual style and fidelity of WildStar is one of its hallmarks, but as the teacher in our shop class told us: there’s always room for improvement (right before giving us directions to the nurse’s office). As we approached work on the WildStar: Reloaded update on September 29 we decided to revisit some art decisions we made for the game's launch that were based on tech limits—namely with lighting, skyboxes, and viewing distance—while we had the chance.

That means the WildStar: Reloaded update will kick off a lighting pass of pretty much the whole game. That work will extend over the next few updates, starting with the low level starter zones and working our way forward to the higher level ones.

Where before large sections of zones had sort of flat single-point lighting, we’re going back and making it more realistic by increasing the number of sources that light up the environment. We've also added effects such as the rays from an otherworldly star—or a glow from a campfire—that all go into bringing the look and feel of an environment together. While still fairly time-intensive, it’s allowing us to make some dramatic improvements to the visual quality of the game without needing to touch the already high-quality models and textures in the game.